To help address issues with input lag, Stormlash Totem Stormlash effect now has a 20% to activate but deals 5 times more damage (down from a 100% chance to activate). Overall damage output should remain unchanged.

Resolved an issue with Whirlwind where polearms equipped in the off-hand slot were not hitting enemies.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

Siege of Orgrimmar

Malkorok

Resolved an issue where Malkorok may sometimes fail to respawn after a soft reset of the raid instance on Heroic difficulty.

Thok the Bloodthirsty

Creatures leading up to the encounter with Thok the Bloodthirsty are now skinnable.

Debugging Raid Lag in 25s

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

This is an issue that I personally care about tremendously, and it’s no exaggeration to say it’s discussed nearly daily in some capacity, among members of the design team and with our gameplay and server engineers. We made a number of changes to spells in patch 5.4, tweaking periodic and area-of-effect heals like Healing Rain to massively reduce the number of discrete healing events yielded by each spellcast while keeping overall throughput largely similar. Since 5.4 has released, we’ve continued to make performance improvements to effects like Soul Link (batching up multiple damage events into a single heal to you and your pet rather than triggering a dozen tiny heals when you AoE a group of creatures), and our investigation continues. We know that it doesn’t matter how well-designed or fun a boss encounter is in the abstract if you have to struggle with basic control elements while facing it.

Continued feedback and data from players who experience the specific type of input delays described in the excellent original post of this thread would be helpful and appreciated. But while I am no technical expert, it is important to note that “lag” can be a potentially misleading catch-all term that is used to describe a variety of different types of problems. The hallmark of the input delay issue described at the outset of this thread is that it occurs despite having consistently high FPS and low ping to the server. Some of the more recent reports of sharp FPS dips almost certainly have other causes. For example, for players reporting massive framerate drops when entering Norushen’s trials, the most likely cause lies with a UI mod that needs to be updated or replaced (likely a unitframe mod in particular). Other cases of poor framerate in the outdoor areas of the raid are more likely a video card or graphics settings issue. Those are valid concerns for feedback and discussion, but would better be directed to the Technical Support forums for discussion there.

If you’d like to discuss the specific type of performance issue outlined at the start of this thread, including updated examples of Siege of Orgrimmar fights where the problem is most apparent, or whether there has been noticeable improvement since 5.4, that would be very welcome.

Virtual Realms and High Population Realms

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Sorry to burst the bubble, but Connected Realms are only targeted for low populated servers, and Kazzak is high/full server... so it won't be connected. At least not in the near future.
The primary purpose of the connected realms feature is indeed to improve the situation on low population realms, to reinvigorate said realms. Currently that means that some of the highest population realms will not be connected with other realms, but it is a possibility that this may change in the future.

We are very much aware that we have some high population realms that have a less than optimal faction balance, but the situation on those particular realms is a harder one to resolve exactly because the population is already at(or close to) capacity there. The Connected Realms technology implemented with the latest patch will allow us to do some great things to improve the population on many realms, but there are still technical limitations on how high a population the system can manage, and this means that it is very hard to improve things like faction balance on realms that have a very high population. Perhaps we will be able to expand or evolve the connected realms technology in the future so that it can help improve faction balance on all realms, but although this is something we can look into for sure, it is not certain that this will be possible.

Saying this doesn't mean that we are just going to ignore the situation on those high population realms, it just means that it may be a while longer before we have a proper solution that can resolve that particular issue... it is not an option to make players change faction or transfer to another realm against their will, and that means a proper solution will have to be one that doesn't involve forcing people.

Once realms have been connected and the populations on currently low and medium realms are healthy again, then perhaps things like FCMs from current very high population realms to the connected realms will become more attractive.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Cross Realm Heirlooms
We've talked a bit more about our plans in recent interviews. We're working on some ideas to get things like tabards and heirlooms out of inventory slots, as well as "toy-like" items, in a way that's similar to pets and mounts. Soooooo, yup! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Raid FinderI remember when people were begging blizzard to change the loot system and implement a working LFR. Why are the same people who are using flex Crying about LFR when You can separate yourself from the horrors of the pug?
One cause is a cognitive bias called projection bias. Essentially living inside your own head your entire life makes it exceedingly difficult to understand how others do not also live your same life, think your same thoughts, and hold your same beliefs. In many cases it's quite frustrating to try to empathize and understand why you yourself may not be the center of the universe, which generally results in one 'acting out' in various ways. We're all guilty of this behavior. There are also brain-chemical reasons that exist to help us form tighter bonds with those like us (safety in numbers), but be antagonistic against those not like us (self preservation). We all do this to some degree every day.

Dude, they've been teasing about the tabard situation for awhile now. The idea was to change tabards so they work like titles. Just bring up a drop-down menu and pick what you want. I hope they're account wide. Getting Tabard of the Lightbringer on all of my chars would be a pain.

I wish I suddenly had 24 others friends who actually played Warcraft and were godly at it so we could kill bosses first, not record it, and see people cry over how we "cheated" because we wouldn't have video proof.

It's basically how when I got realm first in Cata. I did it just to beat the one's who cared, then I quit the game.

HAHA chaud bias towards BL is just incredible, always posts 2 videos when BL don't get WF, but when BL get a WF doesn't bother putting 2 videos, the hate goes on to Method as we all can see that he don't even posts videos of the Method official youtube channel, instead he posts links to a lesser known channel of one of Methods raiders.

HAHA chaud bias towards BL is just incredible, always posts 2 videos when BL don't get WF, but when BL get a WF doesn't bother putting 2 videos, the hate goes on to Method as we all can see that he don't even posts videos of the Method official youtube channel, instead he posts links to a lesser known channel of one of Methods raiders.

I can't wait until they change the tabard system, heirloom items changing so you could just say, select them from a drop down list on any char or something similar would be amazing also.

Edit: Method's video was more enjoyable, also seems they have more fun and are far more relaxed to the degree you can be at that stage in comparison to Blood Legion, even whilst having a far cleaner kill.